


wolftrap and fireflies

by andibeth82



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Iron Man 3, Post-Iron Man 3, Sharing a Bed, Telepathy, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 17:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1194054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s ironic that while they’ve never needed words to have the most intimate of conversations, the fact that that they now can is something that feels strangely unfamiliar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wolftrap and fireflies

**Author's Note:**

> "You blink, you miss and bliss is dead  
> Playing spotlight with my head  
> Pop up unannounced, take aim  
> Snap the traps (and start again)"  
> \- Carbon Leaf, Wolftrap and Fireflies
> 
> [a technical AU tumblr prompt that turned into a fic]
> 
> unbeta'ed, all mistakes are my own.

Unsurprisingly, the day she finally understands Tony, it’s because of waffles.

To be honest, she expects it to be robots, which was pretty much the only other thing that Pepper would’ve predicted to have pop into her brain when Bruce started giving them lessons on how to unleash and then control their telepathy.

“This is strange,” Tony comments, sitting on the floor and watching the proceedings with a frown. Pepper raises an eyebrow.

“Stranger than you injecting yourself with Extremis?”

“I did the calculations, I knew what the results would be. I didn’t say I knew what the side effects were going to be,” he adds under his breath, while Bruce continues to make calculations, his silent smile saying everything and nothing all at once.

“Count yourself lucky we don’t need to use words anymore.” She pauses. “That should come in handy during meetings that you never go to.”

“Day one of Pepper Potts’ newfound powers, and she’s already pulling the CEO card,” he says, but he’s smiling, and she is too, and, well, maybe there are side effects and they’re not exactly what Tony would’ve thought, but it’s also the most normal he’s felt in awhile, and he starts to think things might be okay.

 

***

 

He’ll never admit that he thinks about it, because it’s not really a new thing or even something that someone else might classify as depressing. And really, for years, Tony Stark has walked in the shadow of death.

Obadiah Stane. Blood poisoning. The racetrack in Monaco, and then if he hadn’t killed himself at his birthday party, he’s almost certain Rhodey would have done it anyway (was surprised to wake up and find that he hadn’t.) Being thrown from a window thirty stories high, shattered glass and all (and damn, he’d had some faith in the dependency of his suits), the wormhole into space that led to nowhere except a dark, empty void.

He thinks about it all, and laughs. Like death was something that could be controlled. (At one time, he probably thought it could be.) Like it was something you deserved, as some sort of prize.

“What’s wrong?” Pepper’s voice cuts through the silence and when he turns over he doesn’t try to pretend that he hasn’t been awake for what feels like fifteen hours, or that he hasn’t destroyed the sixth pillow in two weeks with feral punches that unleash themselves at a moment’s notice and without warning. He can tell from her eyes that she knows, and it’s ironic that while they’ve never needed words to have the most intimate of conversations, the fact that that they now can is something that feels strangely unfamiliar.

“Just thinking.” It’s the easiest answer, not exactly true but it’s not exactly false, either, which he thinks might win him some points. He closes his eyes in the silence that follows, feeling her scoot against him, one hand snaking around the curve of his bicep.

“You know we can do this now,” Pepper says quietly, turning over and staring at the dark ceiling. Tony scowls.

“Thank you, Extremis.”

Pepper sighs tiredly in response and Tony thinks that’s all she might be these days, tired of her and tired of him and tired of waking up at three in the morning. Her voice softens when she edges up, propping her elbow against the pillow. “Say it out loud.”

“What? That you should’ve seen me when I was hooked up to a car battery?”

She jerks slightly at that, an edge to her next words.

“What?”

Tony shrugs. “A car battery. Had to carry it around and everything. Yinsen made it before I create the palladium.” He pauses, suddenly feeling almost vindictive. “What, you couldn’t read that in your mind?”

There’s more silence, but it’s a different kind of silence and he knows that for years he’s been in an unspoken doghouse because of the fact that he never truly talked about what went on in Afghanistan, not even to Rhodey. ( _Talk to me, Tony, I get it, I understand this stuff_ , and he had almost laughed out loud in his best friend’s face because, _I’m telling you, Rhodey, you don’t_.) In some way that he can’t (won’t) explain, it’s almost like dying all over again re-opened a wound that had kind of sort of but never actually healed, aand he should be able to tell her things, right? I mean, at one point, he _was_ going to tell her.

_I made you an omelet._

(He hated cooking.)

Her fingers curl around his elbow, the stem of her nails digging into the flesh of his arm.

“They wanted to shut down the company.” Pepper settles back against the bed as he looks over at her, and she shrugs. “After Afghanistan. Obie wanted to…I wouldn’t let them.”

He’s quiet for a moment, considering the weight behind her words, asking the question in his mind and then out loud.

“You thought I was dead.”

“I did,” Pepper affirms quietly, swallowing down something he thinks might be fear, before managing a smile. “So you can imagine how I felt when they brought you home.”

Tony doesn’t answer, feeling suddenly disconcerted at the feeling that their thoughts are no longer entirely private, that now instead of assuming they knew what the other was thinking, they actually did. He rolls his tongue around in his mouth, debating or not whether to say the words she’s already heard.

“Yinsen said that I was a man who had everything. And nothing.”

Pepper smiles against his skin, her hand coming up to touch his chest, fingers skirting over the place where the arc reactor should be ( _should be_ , and he still can’t get used to that, the loss of a nightlight in the dark, of a crutch that he never realized he needed.) He’s still not really sure what he’s doing here, but he can hear her thoughts and he knows she can hear his, and there’s love, and there’s understanding, and maybe the house is gone and so are most of his inventions but there’s Pepper, and that’s really all that matters, he thinks, after all of this.

“I had you. And that was something.”


End file.
